


The Two Faces of January

by Fandomme



Category: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ben Solo Buys Too Much Food, Ben Solo Is Secretly Very Into Cooking, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Breastfeeding Kink, Brendol Hux's A+ Parenting, C-PTSD, Cabin Fic, Cabins, Child Neglect, Childhood Trauma, Comfort, Congress AU, Conversion experience, Cottage Fic, Cottagecore, Deepfake porn, Developing Relationship, Dirty Talk, Discussions of Faith, Disordered relationship to food, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enthusiastic Consent, Espionage, F/M, Face-Fucking, Fainting, Falling In Love, Feels, Finn ships it, Fireplaces, Flannel Sheets, Gen, Ghosts, Han Solo Ships It, Harding County, Hux Ships It, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inspired by Real Events, Inyo County, Jewish Ben Solo, Jewish Padmé Amidala, KGB asset, Kabbala, Kylo Ren and Rey Are Not Related, Leia Organa Ships It, Luke Skywalker Ships It, Making things Instagram official, Mentions of Harassment, Mentions of Racism, Mentions of Suicide, Mentions of domestic terror, Mentions of self-harm, Muir Woods, Nice Armitage Hux, Nightmares, No Depictions Of Violence, No depictions of attack, No depictions of harassment, No real people, No references to real people, Online Harassment, Orange County, Parent Han Solo, Political AU, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pregnancy Kink, President-Elect Leia Organa, Protective Han Solo, Protective Rey (Star Wars), Realizing you're in love, Redeemed Ben Solo, References to Kabbalah, Rey Needs A Hug (Star Wars), Scavenging TROS for some vaguely decent storytelling potential, Soft Ben Solo, TFW you've been quietly in love for 10 years, Tantric Sex, Tantric practice, The Force, The Force Ships It (Star Wars), Trauma, Treason, US Capitol Riot January 6 2021, Unresolved Issues with Food, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vanity Fair puff pieces, Vice-President Elect Poe Dameron, Washington DC, West Virginia, catching feelings, complex PTSD, deepfakes, disordered eating patterns, mentions of drug use, real estate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-20 11:48:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30004428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fandomme/pseuds/Fandomme
Summary: “Help me brace the door,” she said, sizing up a Kallax bookcase full of his most impressive legal tomes.“Rey. Why do you have your bag but not your shoes?”“I can’t run in heels,” she said, heaving herself against the bookcase. “Help me brace the fucking door, Ben. They’re coming. For you.”“What?”Beneath his feet, he felt the sharp rumble of something that every cell in his body knew to be an IED. His blood froze. Years of training kicked in. Suddenly he was on the other side of the bookcase, pulling it out of Rey’s grip and across the door.“Help me flip the desks,” he said.***When their workplace comes under attack, Rey acts on instinct -- and changes everything in Ben's life, forever.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Leia Organa/Han Solo, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Rey & Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 29
Kudos: 143





	1. January 6

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this to help me better understand the events of January 6, 2021. I was at work at the time, and hadn't understood the timeline of events properly until I researched it. As I put the timeline together, I started to wonder what it would be like to be trapped in my workplace under those conditions. I deliberately avoided mention of the COVID-19 pandemic, because I wanted to focus purely on the events of January 6. I understand reading this story might be triggering for some, and if you think this might be you, please avoid it. There are lots of great stories out there; you don't need to read this one if it's not your thing. My goal here isn't to make light of very real and traumatic historic events. It's to explore the trauma of those events -- and the aftermath of said trauma. This story is also an exploration of how a single traumatic incident in adulthood can awaken years of childhood trauma. With that said, there are no graphic depictions of violence here. There are references to violence, harassment, domestic terrorism, and suicide, but there are no graphic or explicit depictions of any of those things. I've tried to be gentle, and I want you to be gentle with yourself, too. 
> 
> ***
> 
> If you think you or someone close to you may have PTSD, or you would simply like to learn more about it, you can read about it here: https://www.ptsd.va.gov/publications/print/understandingptsd_booklet.pdf
> 
> If you're experiencing symptoms of PTSD for any reason, please consider reading The Body Keeps the Score: https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/resources/the-body-keeps-the-score
> 
> Complex PTSD, or C-PTSD, is a related disorder associated with prolonged periods of uncertainty or abuse, especially in childhood. You can read more about it here: http://www.pete-walker.com/complex_ptsd_book.html
> 
> The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached at 1-800-273-8255. It's available 24/7.
> 
> ***
> 
> My research process for this story involved reading multiple timelines of January 6, 2021. They included: 
> 
> USA Today: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/2021/01/06/dc-protests-capitol-riot-trump-supporters-electoral-college-stolen-election/6568305002/
> 
> CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/06/politics/us-capitol-lockdown/index.html
> 
> National Public Radio: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/15/956842958/what-we-know-so-far-a-timeline-of-security-at-the-capitol-on-january-6
> 
> Bill Moyers: https://billmoyers.com/story/insurrection-timeline-first-the-coup-and-then-the-cover-up-updated/ 
> 
> ***
> 
> On a lighter note, this story was also inspired by Paul Bettany's explanation for how he knew he was in love with his future wife Jennifer Connelly, despite their never having dated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBBtBUSJxFM
> 
> ***
> 
> This story was also inspired by "Kohelet 3:16 (Call Me A Cab)" by LinearA: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15677019/chapters/36421632
> 
> And by "Love It If We Made It" by L_awlietxoxx https://archiveofourown.org/works/19841884/chapters/46984972
> 
> This fit was beta'd by none other than fernybranca, and you should read their fic "The Soiled Doves" here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14381223?view_full_work=true 
> 
> ***
> 
> If anything in this story offends you, or hits you too hard (or hits you unexpectedly), please get up and walk away with my blessing. If you would like to come back to it later, that's fine. If not, that's fine, too. I do ask that you be respectful in the comments: there are people here who are probably reading to process their own reactions to this event, and they deserve a supportive community in which to do so.

1:46 PM

The pounding on his outer office door startled Ben from his Twitter haze. He had an odd feeling of being displaced in time: it was as though the sound of the riot outside and the footage streaming from his phone had merged into a single angry chorus, broken only by the sound of a very delicate but determined fist pounding on his door.

_“Let me in!”_

He recognized the voice, but not the note of panic in it.When God made Representative Rey Johnson (D-CA), He forgot to add fear. At least, it had always seemed that way to Ben. She made sport of openly mocking the people who sent her death and rape threats on Twitter (they were mutuals, but he was mutuals with everyone on the Floor; it meant nothing), and recorded TikToks of herself finding and phoning the mothers of neo-Nazis and reading their channel posts out loud. There were rumors that she trained in a secret basement gym that specialized in, of all things, the quarterstaff. She had once been suspended for bringing a homemade hunting knife to her high school. She showed it off in shop class, and earned an A. He waited for his staffers to answer the door. The pounding sounded again.

“ _Let me in!”_

Were they really not back, yet? He’d sent the Knights (a term they’d adopted for themselves, thank you very much) for lunch at 12:30. They were now fifteen minutes late. Had they evacuated and not texted him? In their evac drills, he’d always told them he’d wait for them. Maybe they’d forgotten in all the confusion, or maybe they’d simply not been allowed back into the building.He threw open the door to his inner office and crossed the bullpen to open the outer door.

“Where are your shoes?” he asked, as she barrelled into the room.

“Help me brace the door,” she said, sizing up a Kallax bookcase full of his most impressive legal tomes.

“Rey. Why do you have your bag but not your shoes?”

“I can’t run in heels,” she said, heaving herself against the bookcase. “Help me brace the fucking door, Ben. They’re coming. For you.”

“What?”

Beneath his feet, he felt the sharp rumble of something that every cell in his body knew to be an IED. His blood froze. Years of training kicked in. Suddenly he was on the other side of the bookcase, pulling it out of Rey’s grip and across the door.

“Help me flip the desks,” he said.

* * *

2:10 PM

They both hissed at their phones as the emergency lockdown alert sounded off. Ben put his under his shirt to soften the noise; Rey tucked hers between her legs. He had an odd moment of wondering if it was still vibrating when she whispered, “I think it said they’ve breached the police lines.”

He looked up at his windows. What little winter light came through was already dying. Crouched on the floor, he’d slowly shut the blinds himself. Rey had wanted to do it, but he ordered her to stay away from clear lines of sight.

“Hardly anyone knows about this office,” he reminded her. “Just you.”

That earned him one tiny little smirk of hers. “Is it true you left it unmarked because so many pages left you love notes at your formal office?”

“You might think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment.”

She retrieved her phone and checked it. “Better than death threats, I guess.”

“You have your admirers.”

“You mean the guys who deepfake me into porn?” He winced. He had no idea what to say. There was nothing to say, to that. Of course he knew about the deepfaking. Everyone knew about the deepfaking. Everyone knew about the drawings and the cartoons and the memes and all of it. Perversely, she brightened, and called up something on her phone. “Have you seen the clips where you’re fucking me?”

His stomach lurched. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah, they’ve branched out,” she said.She held up her phone to him. There on the screen was an animated .gif, strangely elongated to accommodate both their faked faces, of him grabbing her by her hair buns and fucking her face. “Your fanboys. They put me in videos with you. Blowjobs, mostly, but some anal, some spanking. Nothing vanilla, though. You’re never, like, tenderly fucking me in a bathtub full of rose petals, or something.”

Years later, he would understand that this was the moment that cracked him open: watching himself fucking her on the phone clutched in her trembling hand, looking from her fake face to her real one, seeing the single tear slip down her cheek. It wasn’t the moment when he heard the mob call his name, or the moment he saw the burning effigy, or the moment he saw the gallows. It was this moment. This was the moment when something inside him began to die.

“Maybe they have the right idea, though,” she said, focusing again on the looping image. “I should cut my hair. It’s really easy to grab.”

* * *

2:31 PM

“They’ve escorted Pryde from the Senate floor,” he said, when Rey emerged from the bathroom. “Holy fuck, your hair.”

“Is it bad?”

“No,” he lied. It was a long bob, now, and better in theory than execution. It was too blunt. The ends were already splitting. She’d cut her hair with a pair of scissors scavenged from a staffer’s desk. He would send her to his stylist. If they made it through this, he would pay for the repair job. In fact he’d send her for a whole spa day. A massage, a manicure, champagne, the whole thing. “Why did you come here, Rey?”

She frowned. “Well, I wanted to make a-”

“No. Why did you come _here_?” He drove his finger into the ugly blue industrial carpeting.

Rey’s frown deepened. She folded her legs beneath her and joined him back under their makeshift desk fort. “Because someone claiming to be Capitol Police banged on my door telling me to evacuate, and I didn’t recognize him, and he wouldn’t tell me where we were going,” she said. “And because I had this feeling — something inside me just woke up — and I knew it wasn’t safe. And I knew I had to get to you.”

He blinked. In truth, the notion was a little spooky, that Rey had made an intuitive leap, and that it had maybe saved his life. That she'd had every chance to run and save herself, and she had gone back for him instead. “Why, because you knew the Secret Service would come get me, after they took Pryde and Dameron?”

But Rey was in earnest. She was always in earnest. She was always sincere. She always meant what she said. It was exhausting. It felt like staring straight into the blazing heart of a lighthouse beacon.

“They were looking for you, Ben. I saw it. It was right there, online. My staffers have been monitoring this stuff for days. Weeks. _Months._ They had plans. Very solid, clear plans. And those plans included killing you.”

He snorted. “I doubt that.”

“Ben. Your mother is the President-Elect. They hate her. They hate you for not hating her enough.” She picked at a stray thread on her stained white dress. “It doesn’t matter that they’re your party. Your party doesn’t exist, anymore. There is only Snoke. And they love him more than they ever loved you.”

He eyed her skeptically. “If there were a real threat to my life, why didn’t I hear about it?”

She arched an eyebrow. “Why do you think?” She pointed at the door. “Why do you think the National Guard isn’t here? Why do you think your mother isn’t getting security briefings? Why do you think the Secret Service hasn’t picked you up? Why do you-” Her breath choked. She paused to gather herself.

“Go on,” he said. “Say it.”

She wiped furious tears from her face. “You have a mother who loves you, who gives a damn about you, so why, _why_ do you hate her so much?”

“I don’t hate her.”

“Then why aren’t you stopping these people?”

“These aren’t my people!” His voice came out louder than intended. He listened for something at the outer door. He watched her listening for the same. “These aren’t my people,” he whispered.

“Oh, the ones at Hosnian University definitely weren’t your people. They just wore masks that look exactly like your custom motorcycle helmet.”

“Those designs were completely unauthorized-”

As one, their phones buzzed. The rioters had breached the Chamber. They were in the Statuary Hall. _Shots fired_ , the alert said.

* * *

3:00 PM

“Finn and Rose — sorry, Freeman and Tico — say they’ve been evacuated,” Rey said.

“You can use their first names, Rey. I know who they are. They’re from across the aisle, not another star system.”

“They said they had to wear these weird hoods hidden under the chairs, with fans in them.”

“Respiratory hoods,” he said. “For chemical warfare.”

Rey nodded. “They want to know where I am.”

He shook his head. “Don’t tell them. For all we know they’re texting under duress.”

Rey flipped her phone around. “Rose literally tweeted herself wearing the hood, Ben.”

“So? We don’t know if that bunker will remain secure. You want someone to find us based on a text you sent hours ago?”

Rey’s head tilted. “Your mom’s term as VP really did a number on you, didn’t it?”

He shrugged. “Operational security is only ever as strong as its weakest link. The Secret Service and the Marines agree on that much.” His eyes narrowed. “Do your friends know you’re with me?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t told anyone.”

He heard his father’s voice as he said the words: “Well, we can’t have you ruining your reputation by going out in public with a scoundrel like me.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re not a scoundrel, Ben.” She took off her white blazer and folded it into a thick square. Then she stretched out, so her legs were parallel to his and her toes, veiled in stockings that were entirely too thin for a Washington winter, almost grazed his hip. Her eyes shut. “You’re a deeply misguided man with unresolved parental drama who mistook having an old-fashioned sense of chilvalry for being a Republican.”

* * *

3:51 PM

“They’re mobilizing the National Guard,” he said.

“Finally,” she said.

* * *

4:29 PM

“They’re in my office.” She held the phone out to him. Someone was livestreaming it. He wore tactical fatigues and a mask that looked like Ben’s helmet. He had a Tazer. In the feed, there were flag emojis and fire emojis and heart emojis and OK emojis.

_“This is where the enemy sleeps,”_ he said, from behind the mask.

“Turn that ridiculous thing off.”

“Ben, just because you don’t like seeing what your own people are like, doesn’t give you-”

He grabbed the phone from her and pressed the button as though he were holding down a deadman’s switch. When she reached for it he held it up and away from her, and she started crawling over his lap to grab it. “Give it to me.”

“No.”

She froze. Her voice had an edge. “Give it. To me.”

“I can’t let you watch this anymore.”

“You’re not my _dad_ , Ben; I don’t even _have_ a dad-”

“Rey.” He looked down at her sprawled across his lap, reaching blindly for her phone. For a moment, he saw the girl who had brought her handmade knife to school. Her nostrils were flared. Her jaw was set. And her legs, currently pinning his, had some real muscle to them. “Let go.”

“Give. It. To. Me.”

“I’ll break it, Rey. You know I can.” He squeezed the phone. His voice was much softer than his grip. “It’s very small. I don’t know why you went with a Wayfinder model, but-”

“They have less of a carbon footprint…” She scowled, then grabbed for the phone again. “Why am I even talking about this with you? You have no right-”

“It’s not helping either of us to watch that shit, and you know it.”

“But what if someone’s coming, and we catch a stream of it, then we can fight-”

“Rey.” She stilled. Finally. Any more squirming on her part and things would get even more uncomfortable than they already were. “We’ll fight them. No matter what.”

She deflated. Her head hung down and with her new hair, he couldn’t see her face. Slowly, she slid off and away from him to sit beside him under the desk fort. Her knees drew up. When she spoke, her voice was thick. “Do you promise?”

“Yes, I promise.”

She hugged her knees. “What if we die here, Ben?”

The answer dropped into his mind like God had put it there, or the universe, or whatever mysterious force had given her the instinct to come to his office. “Then we’ll die together,” he said.

There was a long silence in which he speculated he might have said the exact wrong thing. But then he felt a slight movement, and a warmth on his shoulder, and the tickle of her hair on his neck where she leaned against him. He felt the fight drain out of her. A corresponding peace settled over him. “Okay.”

* * *

5:40 PM

“They’re here,” he said. “The National Guard. They stopped at the Armory, but now they’re here.”

“…Do we have to move?”

“Not yet,” he said into her hair. “Not yet.”

* * *

6:30 PM

“If the rioters don’t kill us, I think we may just die of hunger.”

She said nothing. His foot twitched incessantly. He had no memory of when that started.

“I’m starving. Aren’t you starving? Did you have lunch? I didn’t have lunch.” He was getting manic. It happened to him under stress. Some people shut down. He ramped up. He nudged her with his shoulder. “Seriously. Are you hungry?”

“…I can go a long time without eating.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

She didn’t answer so much as shrug. There was an odd drawn-in quality to it, as though she were folding into herself, making herself smaller, retreating from even the idea of wanting something. It was as though she were allergic to the very notion of hunger.

“I have some limited edition protein bars from Japan,” he said. “They send me all the most innovative flavors.”

Finally, she sat up. The seams of his shirt had imprinted on the skin of her face, a faint pink scar of Savile Row stitchery. For a moment he felt real grief, not simply because the impression would fade, but because he’d forgotten that women’s faces did that. He’d forgotten what they looked like when they’d just woke up.

“Japanese protein bars come in _innovative_ flavors. Really.”

He smiled. “What, you don’t want to try the dried squid flavor protein bar?”

Her face broke into a smile, a real smile, the kind where her teeth showed all the way to her canines, and then she was laughing, not at him but at what he’d said. He’d done that. He’d made her laugh. He made those dimples happen. Those were his dimples, now.

_Oh,_ he thought. _Shit._

* * *

7:05 PM

“Solo?”

“Canady?”

_Canady?_ Rey whispered, pointing at his phone. He nodded.

“It’s good to hear your voice, my boy,” Senator Canady (R-NC) said.

“And yours too, sir.”

Rey made a jerk-off motion with her right hand. He reached out to swat it but his aim landed badly and instead he was just holding her wrist, and he remembered how when he was young, at his grandmother's house, he would play with the long curly phone cord in the kitchen as he spoke to whichever parent was furthest away on the map. He would twist it in his fingers, around and around, until once he actually ripped the whole damn thing out of the wall.

“You know, we’re all very worried about you,” Canady said. “We’re all locked up snug as a bug in a rug, but you’re not here with us. Are you all right? Are you secure?”

“Completely,” he said, meeting Rey’s eyes.

“Because we can send people to find you,” Canady said.

Ben’s blood froze.

“I mean, we can send help,” Canady elaborated. “We can do that. We have the connections.”

He swallowed in a dry throat. The message was clear. They could get to him. Anywhere. It was only a matter of time. If anything this call was probably an attempt to trace his location.

“That’s not necessary,” Ben said. “We’re fine.”

Rey’s eyes widened. She made a frantic slashing motion across her throat with the hand not clenching his. _Shut up!_ she mouthed.

“We’re _all_ fine, here, now, thank you,” he said, hoping to sound as though he were surrounded by Secret Service. “How are you?”

The phone call dropped.

* * *

8:06 PM

“They’re resuming the count.”

A long shuddering sigh went out from Rey.“Oh, thank God.”


	2. January 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It had been a long time since his dad had last taken him fishing, but Ben knew bait when it was dangling right in front of him. He counted to three, then lifted his gaze to hers. “Are you saying that you’re cold in that room, Rey?” 
> 
> She nodded slowly, holding his eyes. It felt like he was meeting up with a double agent in a spy movie, like this was some code they’d already agreed on. Except they had never agreed on anything, and he desperately wanted not to be wrong, and his heart was going to jump out of his chest.
> 
> “Yes,” she said. “I’m very cold, in that room.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which the tags begin to make more sense.

1:30 AM

“Is Hucks Sr drunk?”

“Brendol?” Ben peered over at her phone. On the screen, Senator Hucks (R-TN) was even more red-faced than usual, and his tie was askew, and he was talking about how today was one of the rare times when he caught himself in agreement with Senator Maäl (R-AZ). The camera cut to Representative Hucks (R-TN), who sat in the gallery staring at his father, nodding along. “No,” Ben said. “Not drunk.”

“Are you sure? Because he sounds very drunk.”

“He sounds that way when he’s scared.”

“Do you think he’ll vote to certify?”

In truth, he had no idea. Not after today. After today a lot of things seemed like they might be different. “We’ll see,” he said.

* * *

3:47 AM:

“Wake up. Ben, wake up. Your mother’s the President-Elect. Again.”

“Good for her.” He blinked at Rey. “Breakfast?”

She beamed. “Sure. But first I have to load this post. This is a really important moment to document.” She eyed him cautiously. “I know you probably don’t want me to say that we hid out together, but it feels dishonest not crediting you.”

He snorted. “Crediting me? With what?”

“Well, you did let me hide with you, and you helped me to not go crazy-”

“I didn’t _let you_ hide with me; you demanded to be let in.”

“You still helped me,” she insisted.

“I mean, I fed you, I guess,” he said. “That’s something.”

Her thumbs paused on her device. “Could I say that _a friend_ helped me?”

He smirked. “Far be it from me to tread on your right to free speech.”

* * *

4:15 AM

“Did that desk go there, originally?”

“Rey. I told you. It’s the bullpen. I don’t give a shit. Let’s go.”

* * *

4:32 AM

“Wait. Don’t go. Don’t leave. Not yet.” She paused with her fingers on the door handle. He cleared his throat. “I mean, I think I should drive you home. My truck has some special modifications. It’s safer.”

Her head tilted. “You mean you keep a gun in there.”

“It’s not a crime. Not yet, anyway. And I think I’d rather have it, if one of these jokers is camping outside your buillding.”

Rey snorted. “Ben. It’s not like they wouldn’t camp outside your place, too. They were hunting for both of us. We should both be careful.”

She had a point. Secret Service would find him eventually, and stash him with Madame President-Elect and the First Gentleman-Elect. But that secure location, wherever it was, was likely family-only. And Representative Rey Johnson didn’t have a family. That was her whole thing. Her brand, her narrative, her signature legislative issue. Born in a camper van in Inyo County, California to parents who overdosed five years later on fentanyl-laced pills. A foster kid who made knives. She came from nothing. She was nothing. But not anymore. Now she was the future.

“How do you feel about West Virginia?” he asked.

* * *

5:15 AM

Mustafar was built in 1961 for Senator Amidala (D-NY) by her first husband. Ben’s mother’s father. His grandfather. The desert pilot. Codename: “Skywalker.” The one who killed himself. He named it Mustafar after a mythical oasis in the Libyan desert. A place he’d always wanted to find. The promise at the heart of every mirage.

The desert pilot bought acreage in Lost River before it was trendy to do so. The property backed onto the Shenandoahs; hikers from the National Park occasionally wandered in, lost. Senator Amidala kept most of the acreage wild, even after the discovery of her husband’s espionage, even after she had him declared dead, even after she married her old friend Senator Organa (D-NJ) and let him adopt her children. The cabin was similarly rustic: its most recent advancements were a chemical toilet and a generator. It wasn’t even on the power grid. The nearest cell tower was out of range. They were on well water. It was Harding County well water, so they would need to buy some distilled.

“We wouldn’t have to do that if the strip mines out here were effectively regulated,” Rey said.

“Go back to sleep,” he said.

* * *

7:00 AM

“Rey.”

Nothing. Crickets. Well, not crickets: the dawn chorus, the sound of birds he hadn’t heard since he was a child. The soft quiet of winter woods. It seemed almost a shame to wake her up. She’d melted into the heated seat, suddenly boneless with exhaustion, and once they hit Route 259 she was out like a light. Ben himself was running on fumes. He’d slept long enough during the certification process to make him safe to drive the two-and-a-half hours to Lost River, but the thought of starting up the generator, making a fire, and going out to buy fresh water and food was daunting. Opening up the cabin was work. He needed help.

He let the backs of his fingers brush the backs of hers. “Rey. It’s time to wake up. We’re here.”

Her lashes fluttered and then she was staring at him. He watched her face cycle through sleepy bewilderment to confusion to fear to the brittle hyper-awareness she brought to every interaction. “Sorry,” she said. “I was really out.”

“You earned it,” he said. “There are beds inside. But we have to warm the place up, first.”

She nodded. “Let me help you.”

* * *

7:35 AM

“I swear I used to know how to turn this thing on. It wasn’t always my dad who did it. Really.”

“Well, for one, we have to bring it outside, unless we want to die of carbon monoxide poisoning.”

“…Right. Obviously.”

“Then we have to check the fuel gauges, and the oil level, then there’s the fuel valve and the choke…why are you staring at me like that?”

“You’re secretly a prepper, aren’t you?”

“Ben. I’m not a prepper. I just grew up in my share of trailers. Now help me haul this thing outside.”

* * *

7:50 AM:

“Okay, she’s topped up; there should be enough ethanol in there to ignite. Pull the cord.”

The engine revved, but refused to turn over. Beside him, Rey was shivering. “It’s not my fault,” Ben muttered.

Rey rubbed her arms. She looked like a Dickensian orphan all wrapped up in his coat. She jumped up and down a little. Good God, her poor feet. He was buying her a pedicure, too.

“Did you turn the ignition switch on?”

“Of course I turned it on!”

She blew on her hands. “Okay, try flipping the choke to ‘half-run.’”

He flipped it. “Okay.”

She opened his coat a little and peered down at herself. “We should burn this dress for fuel. It’s officially ruined, now. Do you have an extra shirt?”

He jerked the recoil cord harder than he’d meant to. The engine roared to life.

* * *

8:20 AM:

“Ben, these hockey socks are _amazing_. They go all the way up past my knees!”

He somehow misjudged the distance between his hand holding the refrigerator’s power cord and its outlet, and banged his fist into the wall.

“That’s nice,” he called out, from his position on the icy kitchen floor.

“I love them and I’m never giving them back. I’m going to wear them every winter. I’m redistributing your resources.”

“You do that, Rey.”

A pair of socked feet padded into his line of sight. When he looked up she was wearing the hockey socks and an old fraternity sweatshirt of his that went just down to her thighs, and nothing else. She pushed her new short hair back behind her ears. He considered that maybe, just maybe, he really had been shot and was slowly bleeding out. That his brain was manufacturing this vision to help him along into the hereafter. That he was going to die and this was the last thing he’d ever see.

“Do you need me to reach back there?” She pushed up the sleeves of the sweatshirt. “My hands are smaller.”

He rolled away onto his stomach, pressing his warm face into the cold floor. “Go for it.”

* * *

10:52 AM:

He startled awake in his chair. He let the air stream out of his mouth through his teeth. He didn’t remember the dream. He didn’t need to. All he knew was that his chest hurt, as though something had stabbed him clean through. Trying to ground himself, he rolled his fingers one by one on the threadbare arms of the sagging chair. The cabin had old furniture, with solid wood frames, but it all needed reupholstering. Even the sofa where Rey slept in front of the fire was too thin, now. She’d cocooned herself in an old knit wool throw blanket. The cabin was finally warm enough. Now it was time to find food.

* * *

1:27 PM

“Okay, I got the water, and coffee, and milk. I hope you drink real milk-” He stopped short. Rey’s face was red and wet. She sat in a lump of wool on the couch. Her lips trembled. “What happened?”

“You…” She swallowed. “You left, and I…” Her face crumpled. “I started thinking these terrible things…”

He kicked the door shut behind him and dropped the bags. He heard an egg crack, and winced, but there was nothing for it now. Instead he crossed over to her. “What things?”

“I thought…” She wiped her face with the heels of her hands. “I thought maybe you had second thoughts, and you left me here, and you would tell Canady and the others, and they would come here, and…and…”

His stomach went cold. His wrath spun out before he could reel it in. “You thought I left you to get ambushed? After all that? After everything we did to get here?”

“I told you, I was out of my mind-“

“Yeah, no shit, Rey! Jesus Christ, I could be with the fucking _Secret Service_ right now, I could be with my mother, the fucking _President-Elect_ , and instead I dragged _your_ ungrateful ass-”

She flinched like he’d slapped her. He felt like he had. It felt awful.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Her voice was small and high as a child’s. Her body was braced for an impact he couldn’t see. It was as though she’d grown twenty years younger in a span of seconds. “I didn’t mean to be ungrateful, I’m sorry, I’ll be better, I swear, I just…”

It clicked. Of course he’d said exactly the wrong thing. He was his father’s son, after all. She’d grown up in the system. Any number of foster parents had probably accused her of ingratitude. He wasn’t speaking to Representative Rey Johnson of Inyo County, California. He was speaking to the child inside her. And that little girl was very scared.

“I’m sorry, too.” He sat down carefully on the other end of the sofa. He reached one arm across the back of it so that his hand almost reached her but didn’t quite touch. “I didn’t mean that. I’m on edge. We both are.”

She peered up at him from inside the blanket and his heart hit his throat. Her face was swollen. She’d obviously cried for hours. And then he remembered the other part of the Rey Johnson fairytale: that she’d been found with her parents’ corpses, days after their death, when the kindergarten called her parents and no one answered.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, more softly this time. He made sure she saw him shaking his head. “I’m not mad. I promise. I won’t leave again.”

Her lips were still shaking. “I know your people hate me,” she said. “I know they hate me and they want me dead, but I thought you…”

He played with the fringes of the blanket she wore. It was as close as he dared to touching her. He looked into the fire. it was easier than facing her. “Are you afraid of me, Rey?”

“No,” she said, immediately. She wiped her face. “Back there, yesterday, I should have felt trapped, or panicked, but I didn’t. I knew I was supposed to be there. With you.”

He could work with that. Something was better than nothing. If she were afraid of him, if she thought he was some kind of monster, he would have to take her back home. Now, at least, they could stay here a little longer. Here, where they both felt safe. Here, with the snow and the trees and the ghosts of the past to protect them. He directed a silent prayer of gratitude to his grandfather’s bones, wherever they were out in those woods, for watching over him and Rey. God, he was uncertain about. Ghosts, he had faith in.

“You saved my life. I’m the one who owes you. I’m the one who should be grateful. Okay?”

A log snapped. They both jumped. They emitted the same nervous laugh.

I bought some bourbon,” he added. “Do you want some?”

She nodded emphatically. “Yes, please.”

* * *

2:10 PM

“Ben, did you buy the _entire store_?”

“I didn’t know what you liked!”

* * *

3:33 PM

“This is officially the brunchest drunk I’ve ever been to.” Her nose wrinkled. “Wait. The other thing. You know what I mean.”

“Maybe starting with bourbon wasn’t the best idea.”

“But it made such a nice sauce for the pancakes! Those were the best pancakes ever!”

The sauce involved a cup of maple syrup, a pat of butter, a glug of bourbon, and a pinch of ancient, withered cinnamon. Rey had said she wanted it on everything. She had wiped the plate with her fingers and sucked them clean. She’d told him she was full, so full, the fullest she’d ever been, and she was lucky he was so good at this. And when she mentioned she couldn’t possibly fit more sausage down her throat, he started to think maybe she was doing it all on purpose.

“Ben?”

His head jerked up from where he’d been studying their feet together on the pine floor.Rey wasn’t small, but she was small next to him. Not as delicate or birdlike as his mother and grandmother; more like a slender silver birch alone in a dark wood, all sharp bright edges against the shadows. “Hmm?”

“Does your mother know where you are?”

He shrugged. “I mean it’s possible the Secret Service lo-jacked my truck, so maybe.”

Rey blinked. “Shouldn’t you tell her? Won’t she be worried?”

“I think she’s probably got other things on her mind at the moment.”

“Have you posted a statement? About yesterday?”

Was it only yesterday? It felt like a week ago. But it also felt like five minutes ago. It was both too soon and too late to say something. And what was there to say? He hadn’t voted to object, and hadn’t signed any formal objection to the certification process. His silence was the biggest statement he could make. It meant his actual statement, when he finally made one, would carry some real weight. Not least because each side would be courting him for his take: his mother’s people would want him to condemn the rioters, and Snoke’s people would want him to defend their right to protest. The longer he stayed silent, the more each side would be willing to offer in exchange for his support. Let Snoke and his mother both think he was irretrievably lost. Neither of them had lifted a finger to protect him, as far as he could tell. The only one who seemed to give a damn about a possible attempt on his life was Rey.

And how the hell was he supposed to explain that?

“I don’t want to say something when it’s still so raw.”

Rey nodded solemnly. “Okay. But you should know, people are wondering why you haven’t said something.”

He frowned. “How would you know? Our phones are useless out here.”

She twisted in her chair to point over her shoulder. “There’s a HAM radio over there. I put it on when you were gone, in case…” She trailed off. “In case something else had happened. But they started playing audio from yesterday and...and then I turned it off.”

“Did anything else happen?”

She shook her head. “No. I mean, yes. Things happened we didn’t know about. Yesterday. People died. People were shot. Officers and insurrectionists.”

“Is that what they’re saying, now? It was insurrection?”

A line appeared between her brows. “What else would you call it?”

“Insurrection is a serious charge; I don’t want to throw that word around loosely-”

“Ben, they tried to stop the electoral process! They had a gallows with your name on it! They left nooses in Finn’s office and laundry in Rose’s! They got a blow-up doll and put my name on her and they-”

“Rey.” She didn’t want to meet his eyes. He had to track her gaze for a moment until it locked with his. He put the image of the doll with her name on it somewhere else. If he thought about it now, he would break something. “Why don’t you lie down for a while, and I’ll listen for myself, out here. Okay?”

“I’m not some child you can just put down for a nap-”

“I’m not doing that. I want to hear what happened, but I don’t want you to re-live it.” He started gathering up their plates. He tried to think of an explanation she would believe. She was right; he was getting rid of her. And no, she’s wasn’t a child. But yes, she needed to rest. Her need for rest was so much deeper than his; she’d been living with the threats for years and now they were real. He himself was just the same asshole he’d always been. “And I don’t want to re-live it in front of you, either.”

“Oh.” She leaned forward. “Ben, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, you have every reason to-”

“We have to make the beds up, anyway.” He nodded down the hall. “Right? We should do that before we’re too tired. That way we can each go to bed whenever we feel like. Yeah?”

She sighed. “Yeah. Okay.”

* * *

7:01 PM

He woke up in the pitch black with tears streaming down his face.

For a second the dream still felt so real that he actually forgot where he was. But this place was warm and dark, not cold and dark. There was still the hint of a glow from the dying fire. He was sitting in his grandfather’s chair. He was alive. _She_ was alive. Rey was alive and not dead, not a limp weight in his arms, not a pair of unblinking lifeless eyes staring flatly up at eternity.

The sob tore out of him so quickly he covered his mouth in surprise. Then he held both hands over it, as though to keep the keening in, but it kept coming and coming and coming, and he had forgotten how hot tears were, how they actually scalded the skin a little as they came down, and he was alone in the dark-

“Ben?”

He stopped breathing. Rey drifted into the room anyway, a pair of ghostly white hockey socks and a vague shape, a crown of bedhead bristling up at odd angles.

“It’s nothing,” he said, thickly, and scrubbed down his face with one hand. “Go back to bed.”

“It’s not nothing.”

She shuffled over to stand in front of him. Her bare knees bumped his trouser-clad ones. He desperately needed to change clothes, he realized, but he kept falling asleep. Asleep in the office next to Rey, asleep in the den across from Rey, and now here in his grandfather’s chair where he widened his legs a little and she stepped into the space between like she’d owned it all her life.

“I had a bad dream, too,” she said. “I had a dream you attacked me. You were so angry, and you knocked me down, and you stopped at the last second but I stabbed you, right here.” She pressed her hands to her belly. Her breath hitched up in a sob. “And you looked so sad, like I had betrayed you, and I wanted to take it back, but I couldn’t, and…and…”

For a moment his hands covered hers, splaying so wide his fingers fanned over her belly. Then he took hold of her hands and pulled them away, gently. Apparently she wore her leather gauntlet bracelets to bed, too. They were soft with age, like his dad’s old flight jacket. How many years had she worn them? He couldn’t remember a time he’d seen her without them. She must be so pale, under there — what had been hidden for so long must be so delicate.

“I’d never hurt you,” he said. The words came out choked. The dream returned to him suddenly: how he’d gotten there too late, how he crawled and crawled and it was all for nothing because she was already gone. He forced himself to look up at her.In the fading orange light he saw the single tear that slipped down her face. There were ten years between them, the same as his parents, but in his sweatshirt she looked impossibly young. He squeezed her wrists. “You know that, right? You know I’d never, I could never, Rey, I-”

And then he was roaring into his own sweatshirt where it fell against her belly, because she had closed the gap between them and wrapped his arms around her and he had melted into tears. He sobbed and sobbed, louder than he thought possible. His fingers clawed their way up to her shoulders. He held her so tight he heard her heart beating. Her body shook with his, but only a little; he could feel the strength of her, steely and resolute, like the birch he’d imagined earlier. She stood there calmly, stroking his hair, while he caught his breath and tried to remember the last time he’d cried like this. It was years ago. Decades. It was the death of his grandmother — the thought of her small shriveled body sprouting tubes in a hospital oceans away. It was the Second Intifada and his mother wouldn’t let him go. At the time, it felt like another reason for hating her. That was the last time he’d felt this helpless. That was his last brush with death. 

“I’m sorry,” he managed to say, when the sobs subsided.

“It’s all right; it’s your sweatshirt, not mine.”

He pulled his face away. In the dying light he could just barely make out her features. But her body wasn’t moving; she wasn’t stepping out of the circle of his arms and legs. And her hands remained on his shoulders. _I had a dream you were dead_ , he wanted to say. _I had a dream I held your lifeless body in my arms and all I could think of was how I never kissed you._

“No,” he said. “I’m sorry about everything. All of it. The jokes, the memes, the mudslinging, all of it. You should have left me there-”

“Ben, no-”

“You should have left me there, Rey; you should have saved yourself-”

“I did save myself! I came to you!” Her fingers kneaded his shoulders. “Who’s to say I would have survived, if I stayed out there on my own? Maybe I would have made a wrong turn, and run into the people who wanted me dead. But something told me to find you, and I listened, and here we are, alive.” Her head tilted. “Isn’t that what matters?”

There was a God, Ben decided. There was a God and He was real and His grace felt exactly like this. Until this moment, Ben had only loosely believed — honestly, it seemed more like branding than anything else — but now he was convinced. There was something out there. Some all-powerful force controlling everything. It was the only explanation for this moment.

Rey’s stomach rumbled terribly.

She stepped back, horrified, covering her stomach with both arms, as though ashamed of feeling any kind of hunger. “I’m sorry!”

He chuckled. “What for?” He stood up. “Come on. It’s dinner time anyway.”

* * *

9:32PM

“It’s warmer out here, by the fire.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Yes, that’s generally how fires work.”

“No, I mean for sleeping; that must be why you were out here sleeping in the chair, because it’s warmer. Than the bedrooms.”

It had been a long time since his dad had last taken him fishing, but Ben knew bait when it was dangling right in front of him. He counted to three, then lifted his gaze to hers. “Are you saying that you’re cold in that room, Rey?”

She nodded slowly, holding his eyes. It felt like he was meeting up with a double agent in a spy movie, like this was some code they’d already agreed on. Except they had never agreed on anything, and he desperately wanted not to be wrong, and his heart was going to jump out of his chest.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m very cold, in that room.”

“Even under all the blankets.”

“Even under all the blankets.” Her tongue slipped out like she was working an especially difficult engineering problem. “And I was thinking, because you were so warm in your office, you run really hot, and when I was next to you I didn’t need-”

“Okay.” He swallowed. “Just let me take a shower, first.”

Her eyes popped. “Oh, of course! Do what you want! I totally didn’t mean for you to feel pressured to-”

“One of us has to test out the water heater. And probably kill some spiders. It should be me.”

She winced. “Okay. I guess I’ll just…wait…”

“I won’t take long.” He grimaced at his own choice of words. When he noticed her drifting toward the hall, he grabbed her wrist and held it until she turned back to face him. “But if you’re asleep when I get there, that’s okay. And if you’re still awake when I get there, that’s okay, too. Whatever you want is okay.”

She beamed. “Okay.”

* * *

9:59 PM:

When he got there, Ben saw she’d left a kerosene lamp turned very low. Rey was still awake, watching him silently from her place under the blankets. The bed was much smaller than he remembered; as a child he’d thought of it as luxuriantly large, but in reality it was barely a double. Even if nothing happened he’d still feel her all night, sense every twitch of her dreams. Again he considered that maybe he’d been wrong, gotten his wires crossed, was about to ruin everything. He moved slowly just in case this was true. She didn’t move when his knee hit the mattress. When he pulled the many blankets back he saw how her bare neck became her bare shoulder, saw the long pale arc of her pressed naked into flannel.

“Oh, thank God,” he said, before he buried his mouth in hers.

* * *

10:07 PM:

“Wait, wait, wait. Wait.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Shouldn’t we talk about this?”

“About what?”

“This! What’s happening right now! Is this really happening? Is this us?”

“…You wish you were with someone else?”

“No! No. God, no. Just you. Only you. But you, you’re like, one of those enthusiastic consent people, right?”

“Well, yes, generally, I advocate for that.”

“And not that I’m not, but what if I do something wrong? What if you want someone like in those clips you showed me, and I’m not that guy? Or what if I’m too much like that guy, and I hurt you? What if-”

“I don’t want the deepfaked version of you. I want the real you.”

“But what if the real me doesn’t ask you right, or doesn’t ask you often enough, and does something wrong, and this is just a reaction to what happened and later on you think it’s a mistake?” A pause. “What if you’re ashamed of me? What if I’m not good at this? What if I’m not…good?”

“…If you want to slow down, we can. We don’t have to do anything, like you said before. I mean I probably pressured you, being naked, it was presumptuous of me-”

“No. No, don’t think that. I didn’t mean it like that. Here, you feel this?”

“…It’s rather impossible not to.”

“You did that to me. That’s yours. It belongs to you. I’m just…worried.”

“Why are you worried?”

“Because…”

“It’s okay. You can tell me. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

“Because…. Because what if I screw up, and the first time is the last time? What if we never-”

* * *

10:49 PM:

“…I think we can safely assume that we will be doing this again.”

He laughed into her hair. “Thank you.”

“Thank _you_.” She lay down on his chest.

He took hold of her wrist. “Why don’t you ever take these off? The gauntlets?”

“I can’t,” she said, simply. Outside, something screamed, and her head popped back up. “What the fuck was that?”

“A screech owl, probably.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, but I doubt it’s anything else.” He stroked her newly-shorn hair. “When I was little, I used to think I heard my grandfather’s ghost, out there in the woods.”

She lay back down. “Is that where he…?”

“Yeah. Most likely. They found a note, but not a body. There’s all kinds of caves and tunnels out there; he might never be found. My grandmother had to have him declared dead, in order to re-marry. It took years.”

“That poor woman…”

“In the note — it’s in the CIA museum — he said he was ashamed of disgracing her, and he knew his being a KGB asset would ruin her political career, so he planned do the honorable thing. But he couldn’t bear to let her find him dead, either. He couldn’t stand to leave her with that image in her mind.”

Rey nodded slowly, as though she were adding something up. “Is that why you turned my phone off, before?”

His eyebrows went straight to his hairline. This whole “being seen” thing was very alarming. In any other scenario it would have sent him packing. But she was warm and alive and here and safe with him. And when she came she said his name and it was like the first time he’d ever heard it. “I…hadn’t thought of it that way. But maybe. I guess.”

She stiffened. “Wait. Whose room is this? Is this your room?”

“Technically it’s my uncle Luke’s room; he bought my mother out of her share of the property before she launched her campaign, because of the emoluments clause.”

“This was your parents’ bed, wasn’t it?” She covered her face. “Wait, you weren’t, like, conceived here, were you? Like, right here?”

“I mean, it’s possible-”

“Oh, _God_ -”

“My grandfather made the bedframe himself. He carved all kinds of lucky symbols underneath. Stuff he learned from the Bedouin, some Russian stuff. Apparently he used to say that’s how they got twins-”

“Please stop talking. And check my strings, later.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“I mean the odds are very thin, with this kind of implant. But it could mean a D&C, I think, and we all know how you feel about that.”

“You don’t know how I feel about that.”

She covered her face with her hands. “Jesus Christ, I fucked a Republican.”

“And you said you’d do it again.” He rolled over and put his hand over her belly. “And you don’t know how I feel about that. You don’t. How I was brought up, that’s not an issue. And I’ve never made it an issue.”

She folded her arms and looked him in the eye. “You just happen to vote with the party that makes it an issue.”

“It’s a states’ rights issue. I represent the people of Orange County. And the people of Orange County don’t want to change Roe.”

Her mouth became a line. “But you understand that if that happened, if you just got me pregnant, I would have to jump through a ton of hoops to have an abortion, for entirely necessary medical reasons related to my method of contraception.”

“I understand.”

“And that even if I didn’t have those medical reasons, and I just didn’t want to derail my entire career-”

“You could have a baby and career. You could be pregnant on the House Floor. You’d be helping the cause, actually.” He climbed over her and settled between her legs. He whispered in her ear. “I know you. You’d work right up until your due date. I’d have to beg you to stop.”

She shivered. “Sure, I’d just be filibustering away, big as a house, tits three times their size, with everyone staring at me and judging me, and your entire caucus shaming me for being an unwed mother.”

_I said nothing about being unwed_ , he wanted to object, but didn’t. “You wouldn’t let that bother you,” he said, instead. He kissed the column of her throat. The other thing about her haircut he didn’t like was how it now hid her neck from him. With her hair up, he could look at it all the time. Especially when she sat in front of him on the Floor and he could watch the swoop of it as she bent her head to listen closely. “It would drive people crazy and you’d relish every minute of it.”

“It might horrify the Hucks family into a coma,” she reasoned. Her fingers threaded in his hair and her ankles curled around his legs. “It might be worth it, just for that.”

“See? We should get to work right away.” He pressed himself somewhat meaningfully into her thigh, and gave her an experimental lick. She pebbled up beautifully. “You know they allow breastfeeding in Parliament in Canada and the UK, now.”

She smirked. “I did know that, thank you.”

He bent his head to her breast. She was so soft there it felt almost wrong to have his unshaven skin against hers. But she arced up into him, gave him more, let him fill his hands and mouth.

“Would you like to see that?” she breathed.

“Hmm?”

“Would you… _ah!_ …Would you like to watch me do that? In front of everyone?” His hands clenched on her and hers clenched in his hair. Her voice was getting so high, again. “Could you share me, like that? If they all knew it was yours?”

Something she said shot straight down his spine. It was like she had a lockpick fitted just for him, like she could spring his heart open wide and take anything, anytime. He moaned around her flesh.

“If they all knew why I was so big, and so full, was because you did that to me, because I let you-”

“Let me in,” he pleaded. “Let me in, Rey, I need-”

* * *

11:37PM

“So have you _always_ felt that way about having kids?”

“Uh, no, actually, I think that’s pretty new.”

“Is it because we almost died?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” He looked down at her and asked the question he’d tried to ask earlier. “Is this whole thing happening because we almost died?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe. But I like it. It makes me feel good. I think we deserve to feel good. I think we should pull something good out of this nightmare if we can. I think if we don’t, then they win.” She rested her chin on his chest to face him. “Do _you_ think it’s because we almost died? You’re the one who keeps asking.”

He plunged his hand back into her hair. “I don’t know. You’ve always…” He tried again. “I always thought…”

She frowned. “You always thought what?”

He kept stroking her hair. He wanted to help her wash it, later. And he would. He would put her under the too-small shower head and scrub every inch of her and check her strings and feed her and make her scream and watch her sleep. He could do those things, now. She let him do those things, to her.

“I’ve always thought that if we met in a different place, then maybe things might be different.” He frowned. “I mean, some other place than that climate thing in Muir Woods. Where you fainted.”

“I didn’t _faint_. It was just heatstroke. I was on my period, and I’d spent all my food money on the trip, so I was only eating the free stuff, and I just-”

“You fainted. I watched it happen.” 

Her eyebrows lifted. “Oh yeah? How come you didn’t catch me?”

“What makes you think I didn’t?”

Her mouth dropped. “You _didn’t_.”

“You were standing with your back to me. Pointedly. You hated me. Leia Organa’s traitor son. So I was facing away from you, too, and suddenly you just stopped talking-” He snapped his fingers. “And I turned, and you were about to hit the ground. I barely caught you. Just your shoulders.”

She threw up her hands. “Why wouldn’t you _tell me_ that? Why weren’t you there when I woke up?”

“You needed a Gatorade more than you needed me.” He decided to be even more honest. “And you were nineteen. I couldn’t even buy you a drink, later.” 

Her eyes popped. “Benjamin Beckett Prestor Organa-Solo!”

“Wow, _someone’s_ been spending time at Wikipedia.”

Rey pinked up. She lay back down on his chest. “You still might have introduced yourself.”

“You would’ve thought I was being creepy. And you would’ve been right. A moment longer and I would’ve..” He licked his lips. “I would’ve been hard to get rid of.” He resumed playing with her hair. “I would’ve fucked it up, anyway.”

She reached for his hand and enlaced their fingers. “You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. It was almost ten years ago. Things were different. I would’ve fucked it up.”

She snorted, and peered up at him. “It’s not like it would have worked, anyway, even if we voted the same ticket. Some orphan from the desert, and the son of a former Vice-President?” She laughed. “Ben, this _couldn’t_ have happened any other way. We’re too different. That’s the beauty of the House; it’s the place where different people meet each other. It’s the only place that’s big enough for all of us.” She blinked back tears. “It’s the only place we all belong.”

_I love you_ , thought. And then, _Good God, for how long have I loved you? How much time have I wasted?_

“You look sad,” she said. 

He tugged at her shoulders. “Come here.”

She crawled up so they could face each other, on their sides. It didn’t last long, though. Soon he was kissing her: her wet eyes and the line between her brows and the tip of her perfect nose and the corners of her mouth where she giggled and said, “Again? Really?”

“Always,” he said, and plunged into her mouth.


	3. January 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our heroes are discovered.

5:05 AM:

Adrenaline flooded him. His eyes opened. Something was wrong. Rey was frozen stiff in his arms. She wasn’t even breathing. In the den, a floorboard creaked.

“Ben, there’s someone in the house-”

His hand rose up to cover her mouth. “Get dressed, and count to thirty,” he whispered. “And if I’m not back here before then, I want you to take my keys, over there, then crawl out that window, and take the truck. Okay?”

She shook her head. “No, we should go together-”

“The combination to the gun safe in the truck is O-66. It’s loaded.”

He rolled out of bed and focused on his bare toes embracing the floor as soundlessly as possible. He pulled on his shorts, and crouched low. There, beneath the bed, right where his dad always said it would be, was the fireaxe. Because there were all kinds of laws about how you could store guns in the house, his dad pointed out, but nobody said you couldn’t keep a three-foot pickhead fireaxe at your cabin.

He stood behind the bedroom door and lifted the axe. He twisted the knob ever so slowly, and willed the winter darkness to hide him when he stepped out into the hall. Who had followed them? How many? He had to give Rey time-

_“Ben!”_ Something shattered in the kitchen. “Put that thing down!”

The axe fell from his hand. _“Dad?”_

“Yes! Jesus! You almost gave me a heart attack. Christ. And I broke this thing. Look at this. There’s coffee everywhere.”

“Dad, what time is it? Did you drive here in the dark? You’re not supposed to drive at night, anymore-”

“And why is there so much food, here? You’re gonna overload the refrigerator coil.” His dad frowned. “Did you start the generator all by yourself?”

“What are you _doing_ here?”

His dad pointed at him. “I could ask you the same damn thing! Do you have any idea how worried your mother is? She doesn’t need that kind of stress, right now! She has enough on her plate already, without you running off-”

“Ben?”

He squeezed his eyes shut. He had second thoughts about the existence of God. The Devil, however, was starting to feel like a real possibility.

“Well, hello,” his dad said, and his voice had taken on a very different tone. “What have we here?”

“Dad, Rey. Rey, Dad.”

“Hello, Captain Solo. I believe we last met at the Governor’s ball.” She was wearing his socks and his sweatshirt, again. Socks his dad had bought for him, for hockey games they didn’t play.

“Rey Johnson!” His dad’s glee was palpable. “Representative Rey Johnson! Inyo County! Fancy meeting you here! What a pleasant surprise!”

“I’m, er, glad you think so. I’ll just…take a shower. Right now. In there.” She darted down the hallway. The bathroom door slammed. He desperately wished he could be in there with her. Or anywhere but here, really.

“So this is new,” his dad said, when the water hit the tiles.

“Don’t.” Ben held up a finger. “Don't start.”

“Do you need some antiseptic for those claw marks?”

“What claw marks? What are you even…” His dad gestured around his chest. Ben looked down. “Oh. Shit.”

“You think maybe you should get dressed? Now? Please?” His dad went to the front door and opened it. He smiled huge and waved just as broadly. “It’s all right, folks! He’s in here! Everything’s fine! We’re all fine, here, now!”

Ben heard a chopper overhead.

“You called the Secret Service,” he said.

His dad slammed the front door shut and turned to face him. “Your mother called them. And you’re lucky they let me go in, first. I had to talk them out of using the battering ram.”

* * *

6:10 AM

“Wait, you honestly thought we wouldn’t let her into the bunker?”

“I thought it was family-only! I thought she’d need clearance!”

“That is a point,” Rey said. “From a security perspective.”

“Well, from a _security perspective_ , he should have been with us, and not some hillbilly hideaway in the back of beyond with no cell service and a generator he can’t even start. This isn’t a safe place. You’re-”

But Ben wasn’t listening. He was noticing the way a light in Rey had dimmed slightly, how she had pushed herself back into her chair, how her eyes roved around the room as though looking for an exit.

“-surrounded by Snoke’s people out here; you ever think of that? If the wrong person recognized you-”

“I think I’ll strip the bed,” Rey said, “if we’re leaving. Is there a laundromat open, at this hour? I could take them in and wash them, and the bath towels, and the tea towels-“

“We’ll figure it out,” Ben said, but she had already stood to leave.

“And it doesn’t exactly look great for your mother, not having you with her, right now,” his dad was saying, as Rey wandered down the hall.

“You fucking asshole,” Ben whispered, when the bedroom door closed.

His dad reared back. “Excuse me?”

Ben watched the empty hallway where Rey had disappeared. Then he turned back to his father. “You couldn’t just let me do one good thing,” he said. “You couldn’t just let me save one person.”

“You didn’t save her, you ran-”

“She saved my fucking life, Dad. I owe her one. I owe her _everything._ Because when it counted? You weren’t there. The Secret Service wasn’t there. We waited for hours in the Capitol, and no one came.” His face felt hot. His throat was tight. “We had no idea what the threat model was. We had no idea how deep the conspiracy went or how high it ran. For all we knew there were snipers watching our windows, or explosives rigged to our front doors. So no, I didn’t join you. And no, I didn’t wait patiently at home for my summons like a good boy. I got the fuck out. I went someplace-”

“Ben, you need to calm down-”

_“Do not tell me to calm down!”_ He stood up and kicked his chair out from under him. It clattered against the wall. He ran his hands through his hair. It was hard to breathe. Something was squeezing his chest from the inside. “They fucking tried to kill us. Do you understand that? We almost fucking died. There were guns, and bombs, and knives, and fucking zipties, and a gallows, and they were _hunting us_ , and so _no_ , I wasn’t exactly in a trusting mood.”

His dad looked sad. And old. Older than Ben actually remembered him being. As though he had aged precipitously overnight. Ben knew the feeling.

“Of course I understand that,” his dad said, quietly. “Do you have any idea how scared we’ve been? We couldn’t find you anywhere. We thought they _took_ you. I went out of my goddamn _mind_ , kid.”

Ben sighed deeply. He wanted to hide his face in shame. He wanted to punch something. He wanted to sleep forever. Because his old man was right: coming here was an enormously stupid idea. It was a crazy solution to an even worse problem: to run and hide and go radio silent and, worse, to take Rey with him, as though she were some talisman against evil. As though, having protected him once, she could protect him always. As though he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life repaying that debt. 

He could have joined his parents. He could have brought Rey with him. They wouldn’t have refused him, not it if meant his leaving. Not if he dug in his heels and said _She’s my guest_. The rising star of his mother’s caucus? Of course his mother would have moved Heaven and Earth to let Rey in. Selfishly, he had wanted her to himself, just for that little bit longer. He had wanted her out here in the snow and the trees with the firelight flickering across her sleeping face; he wanted to bring her home.

But Mustafar wasn’t home. He would have to face his mother. And Snoke. And the people who wanted him and Rey dead. He would have to stand with them on the Floor. Eat with them in the cafeteria. Feel their eyes on him, on Rey. He would have to go back to the office where he’d promised her that if they died it would be together, and somehow get work done.

“I’m being torn apart,” Ben said.

His dad snorted. “Just you wait,” he said. “Someday, this is going to be you. Someday, your own kid will do this — go off on some damn fool idealistic crusade or who knows what — and then you’ll know what being torn apart really is.” He peered down the hall, then back at Ben. “Someday soon, by the looks of it.”

* * *

6:42 AM:

The sheets and blankets were in a pile in the center of the bed where Rey had left them. Rey had curled herself around them like an animal burrowing down for winter. He made sure that the door clicked shut behind him, and watched her stiffen and sit up, wiping her face.

“Sorry,” she said, not turning. “I guess I’m still tired.”

“You can lie back down, if you’re still tired. It’s not like they’re leaving without us.”

“No, I’m fine, I’m sorry-”

“Rey.” He sat down so he was facing her. Her eyes were red. She’d been crying, again. “Talk to me.”

Her face crumpled. She folded in on herself. She hid her face in her hands.

“Don’t hide,” he pleaded. “Not from me.”

After a moment she murmured something that sounded a lot like “I put you in danger.”

He scowled. “What?”

“You could have been safe, and you only came out here because I barged into your office, and if I hadn’t done that, you could have been with your parents, you could have been safe-”

“No, no, no,” he murmured, and tugged at her shoulder until she fell into his chest.He locked his arms around her. “No, sweetheart. No. That’s not true.”

The sobbing continued. It was a high, keening sound, like a wolf with her leg snapped in the iron jaws of a trap. A howl that spiralled out of her from someplace deeper than her lungs, and older than yesterday or the day before. It was the sound of a wound re-opening. He pulled her into his lap. She curled up there as small as she could make herself. He heard himself hushing her between kisses along her hairline. He murmured endearments, the sweeter inverse of the ones which had brought her over the edge the night before now whispered in hopes of bringing her back from it: _sweetheart, sweet girl, precious girl, my angel, my baby, my own, my only one._

“Your mother must hate me,” she said in a frightened voice.

“Yeah, well, I haven’t given a damn what she thinks since I was about ten years old, so that would actually be a point in your favor,” he said, and kissed her forehead.

Rey’s breathing hitched. “You’ll see,” she said. “We’ll go back to the real world and you’ll realize I’m too much to deal with and you’ll get rid of me-”

“Angel, no. Listen to me. No.”

“You’re going to leave me,” she whispered.

“No, I’m not.” He rocked her back and forth. It was oddly reminiscent of his dream. But she was alive, and so was he, and that meant they still had a chance. He clutched her tighter and felt some of the tension ease in her shoulders. Her arms reluctantly threaded around his middle. “We’re not done, yet.”

“I’m afraid,” she said into his chest.

“Don’t be afraid.” He took hold of her chin and pointed her face up to look at him. “I feel it, too. This is…” He searched for a word that would encompass the enormity of what had happened. There wasn’t one. “Something else. I don’t know why you came to me. I don’t know what connected us. You and I. But I know that when the time comes, you’ll stand with me. Because you’ve done it before. So I’m not afraid.” _Of anything,_ he wanted to add. _Not anymore._

“I still don’t know what my place is in all this,” she said. “What are we going to do?”

He searched her face. “We could let go. Of everything,” he said. “My mother, Snoke, both parties, all of it. We could just…let old things die. Walk away. Do something new. Together.”

She blinked. Tears rolled down her face. A remote part of him noticed all over again how beautiful she was. How on earth had he managed not to touch her, for this long? All the times they’d passed each other on the Floor or in the halls or even shared an elevator and somehow his body hadn’t recognized its mate and match.

"He's going to torture me, isn't he?" she asked. "Snoke. He's going to punish you for doing this, and he's going to hold me up and turn my whole life inside out, and if you want any kind of career at all, you'll have to let him-"

_"No."_ He searched her face. "I won't let him hurt you. Us. Either of us. I won't sit there and watch him do it. Not anymore. That's over. It's done." He made a motion with his first two fingers, as though turning off a switch. “I know what I have to do. But I don’t know if I’m strong enough to do it.” He held his hand out for her to take.“But I will be, if you help me. Will you help me?”

She seemed uncertain. She kept staring at his open hand like she wasn’t entirely sure it was real. He willed himself to be steady. He had the strangest sensation a great void beneath him, as though he were standing between worlds and he could see the various outcomes of her possible decisions all around them. He could see the world where, horrifed, she abandoned him, and in his bitter disappointment he became the version of himself that could outdo even Snoke for viciousness. He could see the world where they were both too scared to make it work, where they tried to ignore this thing that was so much bigger than both of them, and each wrestled with it in agony alone because of what it would mean. But there was another world, one where she joined him and they stood together, where he knew exactly what to do because protecting his other half meant preserving his own soul. The one where he did everything in his power to save this miserable, broken country, if only to keep her safe in it. It was an entirely selfish reason for doing good. He didn’t give a single solitary damn.

“Please.” It sounded pathetic, even to his ears.

Her hand fell on his soft as snow. Something shot through him: relief, determination, possibly courage. It was as though all the electricity between them had grounded into one place. He felt it course through her, too, in a way that seemed alarmingly similar to being inside her. They were breathing in unison. Their third time together he’d simply rested within her, barely moving, kissing her face and matching her breath for breath while she insisted this couldn’t possibly be enough for him. She could do more, she’d said, be better, be whatever he wanted. And he’d said it was enough, _she_ was enough, and she’d shattered under almost no pressure at all.

“Yes.” She kissed his temple. “Yes, Ben." 

His eyes were locked with hers when he brought her hand to his lips. Her smile was tiny and uncertain and his was so broad it stretched muscles in his face he’d forgotten were there. “Great. Then let’s blow this thing and go home.”

* * *

8:01 AM:

He made sure her hand was framed correctly before he snapped the picture. Rey turned away from the window, and watched him tab through options. Then he let the phone fall back to the seat between them. It was about a tenth of a second before the pings began.

“Did you just post that picture?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Of my hand in yours?”

“Yeah.”

“Was my bracelet in the shot?”

“Yeah.”

“My very distinctive bracelet that I received as a gift from the Timbi-Sha Shoshone reservation, the one that’s been written up everywhere and copied all over Etsy, even though I’ve explicitly said multiple tims that it’s cultural appropriation and people shouldn’t do it, therefore starting an entirely new wave of commentary?”

He grinned. “Oh, is that where you got it? Do they ship?”

In the front seat, his dad turned around to watch them. Rey didn’t notice. Her mouth kept opening and closing. She looked out at the woods speeding past, then back at him. “And you posted that to Instagram,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“How exactly did you caption it?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t.”

“You said nothing. At all. Just posted the image.”

“I think I used the Moon filter. More contrast.”

Her eyes narrowed. “And that was your first public statement. In three days. That picture.”

He shrugged more elaborately, as though to say _Hey, it’s me_. His dad rolled his eyes and turned back to face forward. The Secret Service agent driving the truck remained ramrod straight. Between them, his phone was blowing up. Beside it, Rey’s phone started chiming, too.

“You’re a monster,” she said, suppressing her smile.

“Yes,” he said, squeezing her hand. “I am.”


End file.
